with the many millennia of the ice-age records in the
deep sea, is that once melting starts, it stimulates
further melting for centuries. Deglaciation keeps going
once begun in earnest: a great example of the dilemma
of the sorcerer’s apprentice [emphasis added].
59

Note that what Berger calls ‘experience’ is really just
a Milankovitch/uniformitarian interpretation of the seafloor
sediment data. Thus, these conclusions are derived, not from
direct observation, or even from meteorological considerations
per se, but from a uniformitarian/Milankovitch interpretation
of the seafloor sediment data. We have already seen, however,
that such an interpretation of the data is logically ‘shaky’ and
there may be no hard evidence for it whatsoever.

Conclusions

The secular paleoclimatological community would be
wise not to ignore or attempt to ‘cover up’ the problems
in the Pacemaker paper. But given the importance of the
paper to secular thinking, they probably will. In fact, both
Science and Nature ran articles commemorating the 40th
anniversary of the paper’s publication.
60, 61 In recent years,
secular paleoclimatology has taken several rather serious
‘hits’ to its credibility. These include the controversy over
Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph, which purported
to show unprecedented warming at the end of the 20th
century.
62, 63 McIntyre and McKitrick have made devastating
criticisms of Mann’s papers.
64 Likewise, the East Anglia
‘climategate’ scandals revealed evidence that influential
climate scientists were attempting to ‘rig’ the climate
change debate in rather under-handed ways.
65, 66 The last
thing secular paleoclimatology needs is another ‘hit’ to its
credibility. And the problems with the Pacemaker paper
could constitute such a ‘hit’, if it ever becomes common
knowledge that paleoclimatologists were either unaware of
the problems in the Pacemaker paper or, worse yet, that they
were aware of them but ignored them.

It is my hope that this series of papers, particularly the
conceptual exercise in part 1, will enable non-specialists
to see for themselves that the Pacemaker results should be
questioned, even for those who accept ‘deep time’.

The evidence for the Milankovitch theory is apparently
much weaker than generally assumed. Given the prominent
role that Milankovitch theory plays (via orbital tuning) in
uniformitarian geochronology, it is possible that many,
perhaps hundreds, of age assignments could be in doubt,
even by uniformitarian reckoning. Likewise, given the
prominent role that the theory plays in paleoclimatology,
anyone hoping to correctly evaluate and respond to
arguments for and against catastrophic anthropogenic
global warming (CAGW) should take these weaknesses
into account.

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of the climate: is the eccentricity-driven insolation the main driver of the ice
ages? Earth-Science Reviews
56( 1–4):161–177, 2001.

7. Shackleton, N.J., Berger, A. and Peltier, W.R., An alternative astronomical
calibration of the lower Pleistocene timescale based on ODP Site 677,
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences
81( 4):251–261,
1990.

8. Hilgen, F.J., Astronomical calibration of Gauss to Matuyama sapropels in
the Mediterranean and implication for the geomagnetic polarity time scale,
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
104( 2–4):226–244, 1991.

9. Spell, T.L. and McDougall, I., Revisions to the age of the Brunhes-Matuyama
boundary and the Pleistocene geomagnetic polarity timescale, Geophysical
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19( 12):1181–1184, 1992.

10. Hebert, J., Revisiting an iconic argument for Milankovitch climate forcing:
should the “Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” paper be retracted? part 1, Answers
Research J. 9: 25–56, 2016.

11. Hebert, J., Revisiting an iconic argument for Milankovitch climate forcing:
should the “Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” paper be retracted? part 2, Answers
Research J. 9:131–147, 2016.

12. Hebert, J., Revisiting an iconic argument for Milankovitch climate forcing:
should the “Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” paper be retracted? part 3, Answers
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16. A nearby companion core to V28-238, the V28-239 core, contained a record
of the B–M magnetic reversal boundary, as well as four other magnetic
reversals, but the top three metres of the core were described by Shackleton
and Opdyke , ref. 15, p. 40, as ‘severely disturbed’.

21. One might assume, since the original Pacemaker results also showed dominant
spectral peaks corresponding to the 100 ka eccentricity cycle, that this
particular climate response would also be linear (input frequency/period
equals output frequency/period). However, changes in insolation resulting
from variations in eccentricity are much too small to have a direct climatic
effect. Hence, the Pacemaker authors attributed the dominant low-frequency
peaks to a non-linear response to the precession index, which depends
on both eccentricity and the longitude of perihelion (see pp. 1130–1131
in reference 5. See also the discussion at scienceofdoom.com/2014/03/03/
ghosts-of-climates-past-eighteen-probably-nonlinearity-of-unknown-origin/,
accessed 17 November 2016).